


What Clara Means To Me

by orelseatlastsheunderstoodit



Series: My Doctor Who Meta [6]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2019-07-05 15:11:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15866160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orelseatlastsheunderstoodit/pseuds/orelseatlastsheunderstoodit





	What Clara Means To Me

When I was catching up on Doctor Who before the fiftieth (I watched 5-6 on Netflix and up through Name on some now-defunct website all in Augustish through November 23, 2013, while starting my first semester of grad school), I’ll have to admit, I didn’t ‘relate’ to Amy at first. I thought she was awesome, and I connected with the idea that both her and the Doctor are running away from emotional issues. I understood Amy better on a rewatch, and now I love her, but I wasn’t Amy. (She was for others, and I love her for that, for her passion and her pain and her stubborn belief, but I wasn’t her, and that was okay. I was learning from a story of someone different than me, which is something fiction is a vehicle for.) I wasn’t someone who was able to run away from my looming responsibilities. I wanted to stay and I wanted to run and there was absolutely no way I could do both.

But Clara? Almost as soon as I met her, I felt the jolt of hearing a character say things that I wanted to say–”Well, for your information, I’m not sweet on the inside, and I’m certainly not–” (which on a sidenote makes Clara ‘bigger on the inside’); “Dare me” regarding the idea of doing something that’s scary but adventurous at the same time; “Come back tomorrow” because here was someone who wasn’t dropping everything to run away with the Doctor, who also keenly felt the call of home and friends and family and responsibilities.

I mean, she put traveling on hold to help people out! She’s young and wants to do things but she’s staying put and being responsible and that describes so much of my life up to a certain point. “I keep the book because I’m still going,” she says, and so adventure is not shut out from her life forever. (Nor out of mine.)

And she got to run away with the Doctor, albeit on Wednesdays. But I liked that, too, that she (tried to) maintain both of her lives. She’s only a year older than me, and we’re the same height, and we both studied English in university. (I even taught English for a while.) And so, in a way, I got to run away with the Doctor, too.

Sure, Clara and I are not the same person. (I, for one, am not imaginary. To my knowledge.) I’ve never been in a relationship before, but knowing myself, it would probably start out as foot-in-mouth as Clara’s relationship with Danny started. I’m not sure if I would end up lying to my significant other (and to myself) in the way Clara did, but then, I haven’t lived through what Clara has (fictionally) lived through. But I watched her get more confident, more bold, more risk-taking, and thought, I could do that too.

She still cared, of course; it’s why she looks after Courtney, it’s part of why she can’t drop the Doctor with scorched earth tactics, and it’s why she’d (even in a dream) threaten the Doctor in the hopes (however slim) she could get Danny back. She’s fierce and loyal, recklessly cautious, bold and brave with tears in her eyes, and I saw her and I thought, “I could do that. I could be brave like that. I could let my brilliance shine like that.”

And then…and then her brilliance and her recklessness and her fierce protectiveness caught up with her. She faced the raven, and I was devastated. (I am still tearing up, thinking about it, fyi. The latter glory does not dim the feelings of Face the Raven for me.) 

Like, truly, properly gutted. It was the one fate I  _did not_  want for Clara. ‘Let her walk away like Martha, or let her do something, but  _please please_  do not kill her,’ I thought. I didn’t want her to die like the Ponds or River or Danny. I didn’t want her cut off and trapped like Rose. I didn’t want her wiped of all her character development and adventures like Donna. But most of all, I didn’t want her dead at age 28. (My age, by the way.)

I couldn’t even. I hadn’t cried at Doomsday–sure, it was sad, but I hadn’t sobbed. Same with Last of the Time Lords, or Journey’s End. Or Angels Take Manhattan. Or in the Library. Or in Dark Water. I hadn’t even cried for the four total regenerations I’d watched, but I cried when Clara faced the raven.

I couldn’t talk about it (in fact, this is my first time actually addressing it). Although I intellectually grasped that Clara wasn’t me, that Clara is a fictional character used to tell a story, I emotionally felt that part of that story had been  _mine_ , had been about  _me_. It was like I was lying on that trap street, my adventures cut short by a risk I’d had taken in order to protect someone. 

So I focused on the Doctor for Heaven Sent because I couldn’t think of the reason he was motivated to punch his way out of hell. And the fact that he was angrier than I was at whoever had set up the trap in the trap street (not because they killed Clara, but because without them, Clara wouldn’t have ended up in a position to be killed).

I love the Doctor, he’s probably my favorite character of anything right now, and Twelve has become  _my_  Doctor, but I was still staggered over Face the Raven. (Some of you had some chats with me, so you know what the depth of what I’m talking about.)

And then…and then Hell Bent happened. Part of me still can’t believe it happened, part of me wants Time to get over itself and just let Clara be alive again (but what is alive? is the question begged by lots of Doctor Who, isn’t it?), and part of me thinks it’s really really fitting. It’s by far the best thing that could have happened (I’m still not sure how much the Doctor does or does not remember). Here I am, a week after having watched Hell Bent, and I think of its ending and I cannot stop myself from smiling.

Because Clara has three mirrors, and I’m reflected in one of them, and I’ve been reflected in one of them since “Hello the Chin!” even if I didn’t know it until “Doctor Who?” and “It’s full of stories, full of history”.

Because 7B, 8, and 9 were just Clara’s origin story, the prologue of her story; chapter one has just begun. Where I’ve been before has led me today and the future is wide wide open. And just because I have responsibilities and can’t actually run away from them doesn’t mean I’m cut off from adventures. Life is an adventure, and I’m just taking the long way round.


End file.
